500 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 192 8 



every pine grove or thicket where these squirrels are abundant. Occasionallj 

 you may see a family of them playing timidly about among the branches, but 

 without displaying any of the self-confident recklessness of their elders, quick 

 to take alarm at the slightest hint of danger and scurry back into concealment. 



I have seen two squirrels about two-thirds grown following an 

 adult in early October in Ontario, but they had passed the stage of 

 timidity mentioned above ; plate 2, figure 2 is a photograph of one of 

 them, which show^s curiosity personified. In July in New Brunswick 

 I have seen an adult and four young feeding together in the 

 tamaracks. 



LENGTH OF LIFE 



There are, as far as I know, no data on the length of life of the 

 red squirrel in the wdld condition, but Charles Macnamara informs 

 me that one which he caught when a few months old, and had in cap- 

 tivity, lived for nine years. The account of this squirrel, as given by 

 Mr. Macnamara follows: 



When I was a young fellow, while walking along a woodland path with some 

 friends one day about the middle of May, we noticed a small red squirrel with a 

 rather large head, playing on an upturned root. As we came closer to look at 

 him, he sprang to the ground and, apparently taking me for part of the scenery, 

 ran up my leg and under my coat to my shoulder. When I caught him in my 

 hands he did not seem much afraid and made no attempt to bite; and I carried 

 him home wrapped up in a handkerchief in my pocket. 



When the squirrel was offered food, it was seen that he was too young for 

 anything but milk, and so he was fed for some weeks — I do not now remember 

 just how k>ng — by dipping a shred of sponge into milk and giving it to him to 

 suck. Presently he began to lap from a saucer and to eat a little milk-soaked 

 bread. Next be began to nibble at nut kernels, and finally toward the end of 

 the summer he could gnaw open walnuts and filberts for himself. This all hap- 

 pened some 25 years ago and I can not recall exact dates, but my recollection 

 is that at what I judge to be four or five, perhaps six, months of age, he was 

 eating adult squirrel food. 



For about a year he was quite tame and harmless, and was permitted to 

 run about the house a good deal. But he began to bite people occasionally 

 without the slightest provocation — just for the fun of the thing; and loving to 

 explore cupboards and drawers, if the opening was not wide enough to let 

 him in, he would try to enlarge it with his teeth. One day he was caught eating 

 his way into an expensive bureau, and an incensed household demanded his 

 confinement. 



The tea chest that had heretofore been his home was replaced with a box 

 three feet long by two feet deep and high, with a wire-netting front and netted 

 windows at either end. A little box, eight inches by four inches by four inches 

 with a small arched door in the end, nailed in one of the upper corners served 

 as a sleeping place. This cage was kept on a verandah all summer, and was 

 moved into a hallway in winter. He was a very cleanly little creature, and I 

 never noticed the slightest smell from him. He always fi-equented one par- 

 ticular corner of his cage in answer to nature's calls, and, by my putting a little 

 dry earth there, renewed every few days and keeping the floor covered with 

 fresh sawdust, his cage was always fresh and clean. 



